PSYCO282 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Behaviorism, Circular Reasoning, Caffeine

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO282
• Professor: Jeffrey Pisklak

Document Summary

Behaviour analysis the experimental analysis of behaviour. A natural science approach to the study of the behaviour of organisms. The 4 main psychologists: pavlov, thorndike, watson, skinner. Phenomenon: a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen. Dependent variable the phenomenon you want to explain. To infer a causal relationship, you need to compare two relationships. Rats are placed in a box (highly controlled environment) Hypothesis: exposing rats to caffeine makes them work harder for their food, want to know how hard rats are willing to work. Dependent variable: lever presses over time. Results: rats work harder with moderate dose, large dose is no better than control (no advantage, dose dependent, questions, are the doses reasonable for a small rat. When you can"t measure an invisible process how do we verify that (how can we verify: independent variable -> causality -> invisible process, invisible process -> causality -> dependent variable.